Born a kiwi (a flightless bird), I was quite young when
a family friend took me with her on birdwatching expeditions where I learned the
fascination of remaining hidden and just observing the behaviour of birds in
their natural habitat – going about their lives without interruption from
humans.

This experience has been a theme through my life in that
whenever circumstances have seemed overwhelming, I can recover my equilibrium by
merging myself into the natural environment – for example, by sitting very still
on a rock by the seashore listening to the movement of the sea and knowing that
there are millions of creatures in the sea going about their daily lives without
my needing to intervene in any way.

When engaged in bush regeneration, I am sometimes with friends
and chatting whilst we work but sometimes I am further away, quietly weeding and
listening to insects, birds, reptiles moving about – getting on with their lives.

Although I have no formal education in environmental subjects,
when I was teaching at Elanora Heights Primary School, Sally Fisher came to
visit. She ran a native plant nursery in the area and wanted to collect seed
from the school bushland – in return, she inspired us to see what the school
grounds could look like if we undertook bush regeneration and I was hooked! We
organised science classes to include topics related to the bush and had children
from Kinder to Grade 6 involved in the bush regeneration program. The keen ones
also came out with me at lunch times to keep up the effort and the parents
pitched in from time to time in weekends.

My role at the school was related to computers and because of
that, even though I was technically a 3-day a week casual on the staff, was made
“Science and Technology Co-ordinator”. We became involved in the early 90s with a very crude form of
email technology called Keylink and through that our students communicated with
schools far away about topics such as migratory birds.

Then came the Internet! Late in 1995, I needed to know whether
there was any point in a primary school becoming involved in Internet so I went
searching (it took 15 minutes for each page to download in those days so my
ironing basket was kept empty whilst I waited) – there was nothing much out
there at that time so I began canvassing teachers from around the world and “Hey
Presto!” gathered up 80 teachers from various countries who were prepared to
co-operate in a joint project studying our local rivers and lakes.

Rivers and Lakes

Here comes a confession. At that time, I thought Narrabeen
Lagoon was a lake so our students contributed information about “Narrabeen
Lake”. I have been doing penance for that since 2005 by promoting the use of the
correct name – Narrabeen Lagoon!

Oh dear! We began in January 1996 to see how much information
could be gathered by collaborative effort around the planet but by the middle of
January were overwhelmed by the quantity and quality and – how could we share
this? And how could 450 children in the school become involved when only one
computer could access the internet? My son-in-law, Chris, downloaded a tutorial
on writing HTML which I needed to learn almost overnight – writing web pages in
HTML in a word-processor because at that time there were no such things as web
page editors.

By the beginning of the school year in February 1996 our website
was operational and all the wonderful information coming in was on display so
our own students were inspired to research Hawkesbury River and Narrabeen
“Lake”. A German collaborator advised me to enter the website to an
international competition being run from California. This was a huge challenge
with the narrow information pipe between here and the USA. It took us 36hours of
continual effort to get a relatively small website transmitted to the server –
the Californian server kept timing out on us because of the slow transmission
speeds then available across the Pacific. These days the same process would take
less than 15minutes! My son-in-law, Chris, helped me. He and my daughter lived
downstairs at our place and had just produced twins. Jenny stored extra breast
milk during the day, so Chris and I could feed the twins during the night -
there we were feeding one twin each at 3am in the morning whilst clicking away
on the computer trying to get all these files through to California. However, it
worked! Our school won 2nd prize in the Environmental Category beaten only by a
technology high school in the USA.

From 1996 to 1999 our school organised or participated in a
range of internet collaborative projects but one of them “Endangered Animals of
the World” http://www.tenan.vuurwerk.nl/reports/elanora/ewild.html
influenced my subsequent life. Just as we were completing that one, National
Parks Association (NPA) put out a plea for members in this area to become
involved in protest about threats to the habitat of endangered penguins on North
Head and I felt honour bound to put my effort “where my mouth is” and to “Think
globally but act locally”.

By the end of 1999, I felt I could not do justice to both
environmental activism and the demands of teaching, co-ordinating whole-school
Science days, organising internet projects and being computer co-ordinator at the school so I retired. NPA had asked
me to organise educational events in the Sydney region and in the process of
organising a “Celebration of Biodiversity” event in Beacon Hill, I was told of a
piece of land in which NPA had an interest. I investigated – it is in the
Wheeler Creek Valley and needed far more bush regeneration than could ever be
afforded by NPA so I have been involved since 1999 in a voluntary capacity
managing that land with the help of others.

It was obvious in 2001, after we in NPA had conducted, with 50
or more volunteers, a biodiversity survey in the Wheeler Creek Valley, that all
those wonderful creatures and plants were dependent for their survival upon the bushland linkages through
the Narrabeen Lagoon catchment to Garigal National Park and there began the
campaign to seek the protection of those connections. When Dick Persson was appointed as Administrator to
Warringah Council we went to see him and he could immediately understand what we
were saying. He suggested having a full-scale Seminar and inviting the Minister for the Environment. This took place in
2005. The morning was devoted to discussions of the catchment of Narrabeen
Lagoon and the afternoon for sessions on the Lagoon itself (e.g. dredging, flood mitigation, etc)

Several attendees at that seminar gathered together and
suggested we form a dedicated group to lobby for protection of the catchment and
there was born “Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment” – initially a
sub-committee of NPA but subsequently an incorporated association. The mission
is to achieve permanent protection for the remaining bushland in the catchment
of Narrabeen Lagoon.

Minister Debus announced at that forum that most of the Crown
Land in the catchment would be protected for ever as natural bushland. That land
has subsequently been gazetted as Oxford Falls Regional Crown Reserve but FoNLC is lobbying to have
the crown land, and other state-owned lands together with the Lagoon itself
incorporated into Narrabeen State Park with the primary objective
of protecting the natural
environment.

Friends of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment
celebrating

Following this, I worked with both Pittwater and Warringah
Councils to apply for (and gain) a $1.9million Urban Sustainability grant for
three years of bush regeneration and environmental education within the
Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment.

Wheeler Creek Valley is my favourite place in the catchment of
Narrabeen Lagoon – together with the resident endangered powerful owls and other
creatures – I can work quietly there (unless the Monday motor cyclist is roaring through the bush in
Red Hill) listening to the birds and restoring my soul. I have learned a little
of the Aboriginal significance of this valley and am conscious of
how many thousands of years of living,
loving and learning have taken place there. If you walk from Wheeler Creek
Valley around towards the Academy of Sport it is possible to gain
uninterrupted views of bushland where you
can easily envisage a time when Aboriginal people danced on those rock
platforms.

You can sit on a rock up there and listen to bush creatures
going about their day to day living and, although knowing there is much work to
be done to permanently protect this area, you can for a while just “live and
let live”.